Malifaux Third Edition, First Thoughts

I recently picked up the new book for Malifaux 3rd edition. I really enjoyed playing Malifaux a while back, but it was one of the casualties of the house move. I hear that as the game expanded towards the end of second edition, it got a bit unwieldy and had a few balance issues between newer and older profiles.

One of the changes in the new edition is that Malifaux has taken their continuity forward, and as a result, taken a number of Masters out of play. One of the affected Masters is Collodi, the living puppet I've been playing so far.

They've also stopped having Mercenary models that can be taken by any faction. I had a reasonable collection of unassembled figures to use those rules, and conveniently, they're mostly Outcasts.

So, I'll be taking a little break from the Neverborn for a little while and starting up an Outcast crew. It seems likely I'm going to start with either the Viktorias or the Parker Barrows gang. I'll need to assemble and paint them, so they'll likely be one of the earlier things I paint once we've got the work bench available again.

I'm not abandoning the Neverborn forever. I really like the look of the new Dreamer crew, and I still really rather like both Zoraida and Lucius. I can also put together a weird little puppet crew using either the Widow Weaver or Hinamatsu, so I'll definitely return to puppets one day!

If you're interested in the new Malifaux, I think the best discussion of the new game / rules that I've heard have been by the Schemes and Stones podcast. They've done two podcasts, depending on whether you're:

• A new player

• An existing player coming back to the new edition

I'll hopefully update my project page later on to talk more about what I'm planning with Malifaux.

Malifaux Battle Report: Neverborn Collodi vs Guild Justice (GG2018)

One of my Things for the New Year (I'm avoiding calling them Resolutions) is to get much fitter, and one of my friends is a personal trainer, so I decided to pick his brain about all this Health stuff, and he cunningly suggested we get in a game of Malifaux at the same time. We sorted a suitable time and booked a table at Dark Sphere.

Spinning up the Bad Things Happen app, it generated a Standard deployment, with the Strategy Ply for Information and the Schemes Surround Them, Undercover Entourage, Show of Force, Take One For the Team, and Vendetta.

I selected Undercover Entourage and Take One for the Team while unbeknownst to me, my opponent selected Show of Force and Vendetta.

There were all sorts of interesting new folk with the Guild, such as The Jury and some Monster Hunters.

Meanwhile, I had my usual crew of meddlesome puppets. The plan was to send a few sacrificial models up the right, while Collodi made a push up the left side for Undercover Entourage.

To start off the annoyances, the Mysterious Emissary left some Hungry Land right in the way of the Guild advancing into the centre.

A ?Thallarian Queller? put down a marker that gets rid of your built in suits on your stats. I don't like this new Guild stuff, it seems good! ;-)

Push Teddy forward just a little, trying to tempt the Guild towards him...

Then send a little Marionette Fast and send it careening into a Monster Hunter. The first hit causes some solid damage.

The second hit gets a massive hit, with a double positive damage flip, and . . . black Joker. No damage at all. Bother.

He manages to destroy the Marionette in revenge, while Collodi Slows him up and a Changeling gets ready to mess him up next turn.

The other Monster Hunter is somehow failing to kill my Marionette with Take One For the Team on it, and is annoyingly scoring the Strategy. (White stones are the models who've scored the Strategy, while the clear stones are my opponent's activated markers.)

Francisco and Justice head into the middle... I believe they are scoring for Show of Force at this point. And then it all gets a bit frantic! We rejoin the action a little later...

Justice rushes the left flank and starts pureeing poor innocent puppets!

A Wicked Doll poisons her from range, teleports into close range with her and Interacts to score the Strategy...

The Monster Hunter gets healed up a bit and makes a break for the centre, while the Thallarian Queller tries to deal with the Changeling - both scoring the Strategy strongly.

Collodi comes out and pulls his party trick of "become Slow and your action belongs to me". The Jury potters over and removes the action theft condition, because The Jury hates Fun.

Meanwhile, the struggle on my left flank means that the Monster Hunter on the right is activating late and losing the Strategy. I try and bait them into killing the blasted Take One For the Team target, but no dice!

The Emissary swings up in to the centre, and Teddy pulls right to Hug his friend the Brutal Effigy. Then his puppet friend from the Guild gets all tired and needs to have a long lie down... (I'm trying to bait some more models to come over to nearer the Schemed Marionette so it can become a convenient target of opportunity.)

The Monster Hunter Stalks Teddy and puts him down, revealing his Vendetta against the monstrous child's toy.

Meanwhile, I'm properly, properly bogged down on the left hand side and need to get Collodi free.

Pulled this way and that by his puppets, Collodi is pulled up the board...

Before finally managing to shoot up the board by going Fast, and suddenly the penny drops as to what one of my schemes must be...

I was all set up to remove the Strategy condition from The Jury when it goes and makes the Emissary Slow, so I can't get into range and complete the condition removal. Curses! Foiled!

Justice chases after Collodi, but can't quite take him out. He Runs Away Home into the deployment zone to end the game...

In the end, I lost 8-4. We scored the Strategy 2-1 (with the 2nd turn tieing, me grabbing a point through sneakiness and weasel, and the Guild getting two points through appropriate application of force). Meanwhile, the Guild scored the full 6 off their schemes, while managed to mess up Take One For the Team badly (I'm usually excellent at Frame for Murder-like schemes) though I did still score the full 3 for Undercover Entourage.

I was pleased to do so well given how long it's been since I've last played. It loved that we both played with fully painted crews and it gave me a lot of enthusiasm both for getting some more Malifaux in and also for getting more of my stuff painted!

Spring Showdown III: Malifaux Battle Report: Collodi vs Ironsides

Remember I went to a Malifaux tournament back in May? I barely do! But it seems like I haven't written up the third game I played there due to being completely slack, and this needs remedying forthwith!

I was up against Ironsides, and we were meant to Stake a Claim. We were in a Corner Deployment and the options for schemes were Claim Jump, Eliminate the Leadership, Leave Your Mark, Covert Breakthrough and A Quick Murder.

While I'd never played Ironsides before, I realised that a punching match was going to go badly, so I went with Covert Breakthrough and Claim Jump. The plan was to rocket a few puppets at one corner, work out which way Toni's Patented Ball Of Death (TM) was going, and run away in the other direction as fast as possible.

The beginning slingshot worked excellently, with teeny puppets shooting across the board like creepy little wooden missiles.

Meanwhile, the Emissary snuck around the bottom half of the board, hoping to score a few quick points.

Annoying "Hungry Land" markers were dropped as the Mechanical Rider charged forward.

Metal Gamin were summoned, while I deployed an ablative Changeling and Marionette. If my opponent wasn't careful, the plan was to sneak the Changeling up and "borrow" the Mech Rider's attack to hit it back for more damage than they were expecting

In the middle of the board, Toni and the Mages turned all the puppets into so much scrap. I desperately tried to tie them up long enough that I could have some Claim Markers down to keep scoring.

In the end, while it was close, I couldn't quite get enough markers down with the brutal kicking I was receiving and the number of models I'd lost. Still, a 7-8 loss was pretty respectable and close, and I'd been pulling a lot of tricks to score points.

The Showdown events are amazing events, and if you are a Malifaux player, you should absolutely go. The next one, Summer Showdown, will be inferior to the Spring one for the sole reason that it clashes with a LARP and I won't be able to be there. Other than that, expect three awesome games of Malifaux with lovely people. It's on 30 July, and you can get tickets here.

Spring Showdown III: Malifaux Battle Report: Collodi vs Reva

Another battle report from Spring Showdown at the start of May. I'm trying to work through a big backlog of material for everyone!

Next up is game 2, it's Squatter's Rights, and I've drawn against a Resurrectionist Reva crew. Schemes are Claim Jump, Frame For Murder, Dig Their Grave, Hidden Trap and  Mark For Death. I take Frame for Murder on Teddy and Dig Their Grave.

My opponent uses Assorted Shenanigans to get a corpse candle and crooligan up the field early. I know Reva has a trick to attack through corpse markers, so I need to be quick.

The corpse markers are popping up all over the field, and I decide Teddy can take some risks and just run over them.

Meanwhile, Annoying Traitor Witch-Hunter is holding up my Mysterious Emmissary, which has at least dropped a Hungry Land marker right up in the Squat markers my opponent seems to be going for.

I manage to drop a couple of scheme markers to score for Dig Your Grave but don't always manage to capitalise on them. Meanwhile, the Emmissary is taken down quickly and I curse not putting Frame on that rather than Teddy. Meanwhile, Teddy is trying to murder everything to death to attract as much fire as possible.

Everything is dying, except for Teddy. Around about this point, bottom of turn 3, I've got a Black Joker in hand, Teddy has one wound left, and Reva uses her last action to attack Teddy through corpse markers. I'm all ready to cheat in the Black Joker in defence to take a hit and go down but Reva fails to get a necessary suit to succeed at all, leaving Teddy to survive the entire game...

And thus the game ends, with me losing 4-9. I'd not managed to keep my Squatter markers turned in my favour for enough turns, and only scored lightly on Dig Your Graves (I don't remember the exact breakdown, it was either 3/1 Strat/Scheme or 2/2). The loss of all the Frame for Murder points just made it worse!

So, with a draw and a loss to my name, it was on to the final round!

Spring Showdown III: Malifaux Battle Report: Collodi vs Asami Tanaka

Back at the start of May, I pottered down to Wayland Games for a Spring Showdown event run by the lovely Mike Marshall. I was even willing to brave the horror of Rail Replacement Bus Services for this, which is no small feat.

My first opponent was just starting to learn Asami Tanaka, although I believe he's not new to Ten Thunders. We were deploying on the Flanks, with the Strategy being Collect the Bounty (kill more important stuff each turn than your opponent), with a scheme choice of Claim Jump, Dig Their Graves, Leave Your Mark, Set Up, and Mark For Death.

I took Set Up on Asami and Dig Their Graves. The former required me to drop scheme markers close to Asami, while the latter required me to kill stuff near my scheme markers.

I started off the battle by swinging the Mysterious Emissary around to drop an awkward hazardous terrain marker on one side of the field to funnel all the nasty Oni down a narrow lane of approach on my right.

In return, I got a summoned giant spider demon in the face. This did not fill me with joy and cuddles, especially as Asami's summoned critters vanish quickly with an effect called Flicker, and I was really worried I'd nearly kill something only for it to vanish and me score no points.

I conveniently countered this by firing Teddy off into Asami, sort of forgetting about that entire "Set Up" business and focussing on trying to win the Bounties.

Collodi, meanwhile, tangled the annoying spider demon up in puppet strings and made it walk off in an awkward direction. I can't recall if I killed this one or it flickered out.

 Asami, meanwhile, wanted none of this Teddy nonsense, so used pushes to get out of the way while tiny puppets fought the horrible spider demon.

I got surprised by some nasty Oni getting summoned right in the centre of the board. Points were close, but I believe Asami was ahead.

Toshiro the Daimyo decided to interpose on Teddy to stop him getting to Asami, and a Red Joker on Teddy's damage flip resulted in the incredibly tough undead monstrosity getting torn into tiny, tiny pieces. In the dying moments of the turn, I'd managed to score a point in Collect the Bounty, bringing the score to a massive 2-2 draw.

With it having been a while since the game, I don't quite remember where all the points were scored, but this was a fun and challenging game that I was pretty happy with. I'm still making Malifaux mistakes, but fewer of them, and most of them are a "teaching moment" as well, which is making me a better player.

Painting Miss Ery (Teddy) for Malifaux

With Spring Showdown II coming up, I wanted to get my Teddy painted up to a reasonable standard. I decided I wanted to try and make it look like the example art on the card, which is a challenge I've not tried before.

I painted the Teddy separately to the base because I reckoned it would be much easier and quicker. Unfortunately, once I'd undercoated the model, I realised I'd missed a bunch of gaps. So, on goes the liquid green stuff while I sort the base out...

The base idea was to do the dark green that Malifaux's art background often uses. I used the Vallejo Sea Green as the base. The basic painting plan was a bone drybrush, then a green wash, light green drybrushes of various types, then a little bit of line highlighting. Oh, there was some Duck Egg Vallejo on the vegetation sections. This is the point at which I'd put the wash on.

If you look down at the finished base, you can see the extra detail I'd got from the extra greens to bring some nice subtle variation to the base.

The base coat for the main part of the Teddy was a Rhinox Hide base. It looks oddly gloss for a while.

I then layered on lighter browns and pale green blended in. I dropped some duck egg green into the patches.

The stuffing was an off white with a dark shade. The metal claws were Dark Star Tarnished Steel with a gloss black wash. I also tidied up the blending much more. I'm much happier with the lighter brown blends than the darker brown blends.

This is the finished base, with the black edge added in and the different tones of green blended in, and a little manual line highlighting on the chest bars and a couple of other places.

And finally, a finished Teddy. There's a few things I might go back and detail later, but he's definitely done for now. And ready in time for the Spring Showdown! He's not an exact match for the card art, but close enough that you can see what the intent was, which makes me pretty happy.